Self-Assessment: Does Your Instruction Foster Critical Thinking Skills?
Indicators: Behaviors, Strategies, Practices
1. I explain to students why critical and creative thinking are
important for success in our rapidly changing world.
2. I provide instruction in study skills, such as paraphrasing,
outlining, developing cognitive maps, and using advance
organizers.
3. I teach strategies for problem solving, decision making,
exploration, classification, hypothesizing and provide
students opportunities to practice and refine these skills.
4. I work with older students to develop metacognitive skills, so
that they can examine their own thinking patterns and learn
to make changes as needed.
5. I ask higher-order questions and give students generous
amounts of time to respond.
6. I use instructional strategies such as probing, redirection,
and reinforcement to improve the quality of student
responses.
7. I incorporate computer-assisted instructional activities into
building thinking skills such as verbal analogy, logical
reasoning, induction/deduction, elaboration, and integration.
8. I maintain a supportive, non-threatening classroom
environment in which students feel safe experimenting with
new ideas and approaches.
9. I may use specific thinking skill development programs
and/or infuse thinking skill instruction into content-area
lessons, since both approaches have been shown to be
effective.
PSLC Curriculum & Instructional Procedures
Lesson 4 Self-Assessment - Page 1 of 2
Always
Sometimes
Never
10. I set ground rules well in advance of learning activities.
11. I provide well-planned activities.
12. I show respect for each student.
13. I am flexible, willing to change my plans if a student need
warrants.
14. I accept individual differences and plan for variety in my
instruction to account for those differences.
15. I exhibit a positive attitude toward my students and work at
improving their beliefs about their capabilities.
16. I model thinking skills.
17. I acknowledge every response.
18. I allow students to be active participants.
19. I create experiences that will ensure success at least part of
the time for every student.
20. I use a wide variety of teaching modalities and consider
multiple intelligences and learning styles in my planning.
21. I regularly consult Bloom’s taxonomy of thinking skills to
make sure that my instruction is engaging student thinking
at the higher levels.
Now add three indicators of your own...
(Enter three new indicators for instruction that fosters critical
thinking skills; you will post these to the discussion board.)
PSLC Curriculum & Instructional Procedures
Lesson 4 Self-Assessment - Page 2 of 2